05.25.11

Summary: Why the Microsoft Gold Certified Partner that bought Novell and let Microsoft have Novell’s patents is not giving up on Mono entirely

SO there is this company we call Trojarin, which despite apparent issues with trademarks and other monopolies, is hoping to keep Mono alive [1, 2, 3]. It recently turned out that part of the capital was from Miguel. No surprise there. Simon Phipps (OSI) writes: “I’d heard Miguel was looking for funding to do this…”

On the Novell front, Attachmate has moved the company’s headquarters from Boston, where it was relocated a decade ago after Novell acquired Cambridge Technology Partners, back to its stomping grounds of Provo, Utah. Bob Flynn, another long-time Attachmate exec who joined the company back in 1998 and who did 17 years before that managing large accounts at IBM, has been named president and general manager of the Novell unit. David Wilkes, who has been with Novell since 1991 and who spearheaded the development of the later releases of NetWare and the Open Enterprise Server hybrid, which runs NetWare services atop a SUSE Linux kernel, has been named vice president of engineering at Novell.

We previously wrote about the role of Brauckmann in SUSE. We quoted an article where he says that “Mono is part of the SUSE Linux business [...] So what you saw happening in the last few weeks is we were starting to adjust our investments in Mono to be better aligned with our business [...] Unfortunately that resulted in some layoffs.”

Groklaw quotes this and asks: “Does that even make sense?” It has also found this new article which shows AttachMSFT playing hardball: “Software vendor Attachmate has accused the Department of Defence of using its software outside agreed license terms by uploading it onto a shared network.”

4 Comments

If any money is raised for Trojamin we can be sure it came from Microsoft. Who else would lend money to a project like Mono? My bet is that Trojamin’s business will be agitation but that it won’t just go away. Perhaps they think they can better resemble a community project if it’s not owned by a giant like Novell or AttachMSFT. Perhaps there will be a slew of name changes.

Let’s watch the business to see if anyone bothers to port existing .NET software to gnu/linux using mono. The sensible thing to do is to use existing free software that fits the task rather than port.

People who make proprietary software with .NET can have it run on GNU/Linux with Wine. Mono does not really solve a real-life problem; it’s a solution in search of a problem. It merely encourages people to embrace Microsoft APIs.

I was trying to think of what it’s business case for mono is – there’s nothing it does that can’t be done with java.

The only thing I can think of is that it is for people who don’t want license java for embedded or mobile systems and/or have some irrational dislike of it. This only affects embedded/mobile systems since the free desktop is well served by zero-cost implementations with proprietary-friendly licenses, and the m$ desktop by their own implementation.

There’s probably a bit of money there, but it’s a fairly niche market.

Moonlight on the other hand seems even more limited, if only because silverlight is so limited.

What Else is New

The GNOME Board of Directors works for IBM and/or Microsoft at GitHub; it’s not entirely surprising that despite opposition from some GNOME developers the head of the GNOME Foundation, preceded by people who have since defected to Microsoft, described Dr. Richard Stallman as “reprehensible” and called for him to step down (from his very own thing, never mind the “G” in GNOME standing for GNU)

Principled, opinionated, self-governing individuals aren't any good for corporations looking to not only use their projects but to totally control those projects (copyleft licences such as GPL already make that hard enough for them, so it takes more time for legal 'hacks' such as software patents, "clown computing" and GitHub)

Certain groups that claim to represent the values of "Open Source" are in fact promoting the interests of Microsoft, GitHub etc. (i.e. monopoly or "open" as in a bunch of monopolies like Facebook and Microsoft sharing code snippets/resources over GitHub)

Torvalds and others who are middle-aged (or older) males are often torpedoed using weakly-backed allegations (or insinuations/innuendo) of sexism; that does not seem to matter and won't matter when they treat men the same (or worse)

Linus Torvalds was not fully canceled; nor was Richard Stallman, who's still heading the GNU Project (under conditions specified by those looking to oust him; people who code for Microsoft GitHub and many IBM employees)

General Hugh Shelton, Chairman of the Board of Red Hat, explains (keynote in 2011 Red Hat Summit/JBoss World) that he was introduced to the system as part of a military campaign; it basically helped war, not antiwar

Techrights examines Red Hat’s (IBM’s) hypocritical claims about the Free Software Foundation, founded by Richard Stallman back when IBM was the “big scary monopolist”; IBM employees were prominent among those pushing to oust Stallman from the GNU Project, which he founded, as well

The (in)famous letter against Richard Stallman (RMS), which was signed by many Red Hat employees with Microsoft (GitHub) accounts, doesn’t look particularly good in light of recent revelations/findings; it increasingly looks like IBM simply wants Microsoft-hosted and “permissively” licensed stuff, just like another project it announced yesterday and another that it promoted yesterday

One might not expect this from a so-called 'charity'; the Gates Foundation's critics are often met with unprecedented aggression, threats and retribution, which make one wonder if it's really a charity or a greedy cult of personalities (Bill and Melinda)

The assault on the media by Bill Gates is a subject not often explored by the media (maybe because a lot of it is already bribed by him); but we're beginning to gather new and important evidence that explains how critics are muzzled (even fired) and critical pieces spiked, never to see the light of day anywhere

Microsoft buying GitHub does not demonstrate that Microsoft loves Open Source (GitHub is not Open Source and may never be) but that it loves monopoly and coercion (what GitHub is all about and why it must be rejected)

The European Patent Office (EPO) keeps granting fake patents that cause a lot of real harm (examiners are pressured to play along and participate in this unlawful agenda); nobody is happy except those who profit from needless, frivolous lawsuits

After contributing to the cancellation of Richard Stallman (RMS) based on some falsehoods perpetuated in the media we're seeing the sort of thing one might expect from IBM (more so now that it totally controls Fedora and RHEL)